Self-Improvement Isn't the Problem: You Already Know What Works

How are you? Happy, happy, happy Monday. Come on in. Well, listen, what would surprise you if I said this self-improvement stuff that you've been trying all your life, the motivation thing, personal growth, self-help, whatever you want to call it, right?

That it doesn't work? I wouldn't surprise you because that's kind of the trend the past couple of years. It doesn't work. And yet people keep listening to it.

I don't understand it. Yes, I actually do understand it. But we're going to kind of take that head on today. In fact, all this week. So I'm going to see if I can get it to work for you, even though you think it doesn't work.

Okay. Hang on for the ride. It is the daily boost from MotivationToMove.com. 20 years of doing this show, the positive boost you need every single day to grow your life and grow your business and be happy.

It's simple, man. You come up with an idea, you stand up, you take a step and repeat, you go for it. Life gets in the way, it knocks you down on your butt. You get up again, you try again, right?

Basically, that's the wash, rinse and repeat cycle of life. But it digs a little deeper, so we'll dig into that as we go today. My name is Scott Smith. Good to have you.

20 years of doing this show, the end of the year, and it really just happened that way. My wife passed away on December 6th, and I remember I took some time. This was 20 years ago.

Joy died? No. I'm sorry. So what happened is 20 years ago, she passed away on December 6th, and I kind of healed a little bit, and I got going right at the first of the year.

So this wraps the 20th season, and two decisions have been made about what happens to the Daily Boost after you complete your 20th year. The first one is I've made a decision about what I'm going to do.

play the show. And the second decision I made is I'm not going to tell you because you're going to hold it to me. You're going to send me a thousand emails. If I change my mind, you're going to go mad at me.

And I'm just not going to tell you, but I've already decided it's locked in. Okay. And I'll tell you when it's time. So just got back from Tennessee. My niece got married and

I hate to say this. I'm just not a fan of weddings. I'm just not. I'm sorry. It's kind of a narcissistic festival at these weddings these days. And that's all I'm going to say.

But I went anyway. We had a good time and a great time. But the best time was this. It was kind of a family reunion. It was in a hotel. And the entire family, well, the wedding was someplace else.

We all stayed at the same hotel there in Sevierville. And it was kind of fun because the family all came together. But the best thing, the best thing about having kids and the best thing about being around long enough to enjoy all the kids is when the cousins get together. You know, the ones that don't see each other often.

And you're in a hotel with a pool and all the stuff and the buffet in the morning, the breakfast and all that stuff. And yet cousins, five of them, range from five to 13 years old. And they are just crazy.

Man, it's just fun to watch. Makes you want to be five again. Just run with the cousins. And how many times have you looked at pictures maybe when you grew up and you're like, man, that was so much fun.

Of course, you never see them again in your life, but it's fun at least for a weekend, right? But it got me thinking because I'm a kid at heart in so many ways. And all the way home, I'm listening to the radio. And anybody who's ever driven through North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, the whole thing understands that radio up there is a challenge.

Yes, the mountains get in the way, but also the programming is. There's a Zoomy right now. Somebody under 30 years old going, what's radio? Hmm? Hmm? Is that streaming?

Yes, it's like old-fashioned streaming, except it doesn't need the cable thing or the Wi-Fi. Huh? How does that work? Anyway, we're listening. I got kind of bored, so I said, well, let's go ahead and stream a podcast.

And I'm checking some podcasts, and I find one. And on there is Spencer Greenberg, Jeremy Stevenson. They wrote a book about kind of self-help, why it doesn't work, all the things that do work. They basically looked at 500 different books and broke it down.

The theory was, can we break it down to the 12 things that do work? They call it the 12 levers. Yeah. So obviously, I'm in the car with my wife driving, and we've got nothing else to do, and this whole thing pops up about personal development, and here's what actually works.

And I'm like, okay, cool. This will be fun. I'll listen. That's what I like. So I dug into it, thinking the whole time, it's going to be bogus. And it was.

I was not impressed at all, and not that it matters what I think at all, but it was just more of the freaking same thing. It really was. But there are some things that I agree with, and I want to go with those to you today, and then we'll take that throughout the course of the week, because I know what you want. I know you're trying to figure life out, and we'll expose that as life goes a little more this week.

But I want to go through these 12 steps for you and give you a little bit of opinion about what they work, and maybe you can use some of them in the way that work for you, which is ultimately, I think, what gets our success here.

And you're talking to a guy, listening to a guy here who's done tens of thousands of coaching hours, tens of thousands of coaching hours, and just paid a lot of attention to a lot of people over time. And eventually you just kind of go, okay, I see what works. And that's kind of where I've arrived.

Lever number one, unraveling the cause. Anything you want to do these days, you got to figure out what's going on first. A lot of coaches call it the diagnostic period. The bottom line is if you get on the phone with me, I can't do a darn thing until we figure out what's going on.

We got to unravel the cause of what's driving whatever's going on inside your heart. So if you're trying to find the solution first and you haven't unraveled what's really going on and diagnosed what's really going on, you're not going to get anywhere. It's like going to the doctor. If you walk into the doctor, you expect the doctor to give you a prescription and send you on your way in the first 30 seconds.

It's not going to work. He's going to first try to figure out what's going on. I agree with that. Secondly, the guiding foundations, clarifying your intrinsic value, decision-making priorities, and your guiding principles.

Values are what you hold inside your heart. Principles are kind of what guide you toward the values. People get confused about values, and my inner circle group are discussing that a lot because it's so important. Second step, I agree with that.

You got to figure stuff out, then you need to know your underlying foundational values. If you don't know what drives you from the inside out, you're not going to be able to change anything from the outside in for sure.

Thirdly, gradually confronting fears. Absolutely. Usually the fears are kind of there before you start to make a change. Everybody's afraid of change.

But we know that once we understand what is really going on and we understand what's in your heart, Then we have to look at things that scare you. That anxiety comes from that. And that's kind of pushing people into it.

Like getting outside your comfort zone, expanding that bubble a little bit. That's why coaches can do really well because a coach can take some authority. And after we can get a foundation built in you, we can say, hey, go try this this week. You get a little win, right?

You share your wins and you start to feel some confidence. And that confidence comes back. So many people I talked to even yesterday at Conversations.

People who just lost their confidence. So my goal over time, it doesn't happen in one phone call, but over time is to get that confidence back. And you can tell when it arrives, they get back to themselves. It's so cool.

Oh, we're going to go long. We need to pick up this pace here a little bit. Choosing acceptance. Separating physical and mental sensations from cognitive resistance.

Really hard to do that, man, because you're kind of thinking you're holding yourself back, right? So you genuinely have to go, all right, I know what's going on. I know what I believe.

I know it scares me, but I just have to accept what it is and just go for it. Hard to do. Restructuring disoriented thoughts, distorted thoughts. This is kind of interesting because normally when you get trapped or you get wherever you happen to be, it's because your thoughts are just kind of distorted.

That's all. you've lived a daily life, maybe for years in some cases, and it has gone not the way you want it to go, and now it's kind of become who you are, right? It's not true. It's not exactly how you're thinking.

Otherwise, you wouldn't be choosing something else. So we do have to kind of restructure that stuff, but you don't do it right away. Most people who come to coaching actually want it done right away. Can you do it?

Tell me how to fix it today. It's impossible, man. I can't do it. I got to go through a few steps before we can get there. So I agree with that as well.

Now, it's after this point that while I agree, I really think it was tossed in. So I believe you have to unravel the cause. You have to have some guiding foundations. You have to gradually confront your fears, and you have to choose acceptance.

And I think you can be a rock star after that. Everything else they tossed in after that was, to me, was a more of a tactical thing, but a very important thing. I'll give it that. Just don't agree with what they put in over the order, but I agree it's very important.

So take it with a grain of salt, okay? Optimizing sleep and routine. You got to do that. That's one of the levers, they say. It's okay. I think you do.

I think most people don't sleep enough and you got to have a good routine. Productivity. They made an equation from it. I don't think it needs to be that, that fancy, that crazy, that formalized, but productivity is something you must master.

If you are just meandering around getting nothing done, you got to finish that. You got to do something with it. Okay. Enriching your downtime. You got to be able to turn it off so you can turn yourself on.

Building genuine optimism. Okay. deciding how to think optimistic. I'm that way. I don't think negatively at all. I run into people who are not optimistic and I'm like, what's that?

It's like a monster I hadn't seen in 30 years. Interpreting self-consciousness, using tools like attention training technique, they call it. Basically just kind of understanding yourself.

Managing habits. Most people start with habits. They put it at the end of the list. I just think it's there somewhere. And clearer thinking and decision-making, the last item of the 12 levers.

And yet most people come to me for coaching and they don't have any clearer thinking and they can't make a decision. It's all at the beginning for most people. It's at the end of the list. So that's why I say the first five or six are pretty good.

Unraveling the cause, guiding foundations, gradually confronting fears and choosing acceptance, I think are generally in the right order and what everybody does. And most people that are kind of self-taking care of themselves will go through that naturally. Everything else, I think you can grab and pull and do whatever you want. In fact, even in the book, if you go to the end of the book, it will give you an index that says, and I haven't read the book.

I just, I've reviewed it pretty extensively. I just haven't read it entirely. It says, hey, listen, don't worry about the order. Just pick which one you need to work on.

And there was my point when I first listened to the podcast about the book. Here comes another bunch of psychologists making stuff up, giving it a name, putting it in order, and saying, do this instead of that.

It's the same thing that's happened for who knows how long these days. And honestly, as a guy who's done the Daily Boost, I want to be positive about this, but I want to be honest with you at the same time. You can see that I'm not in disagreement. I am in disagreement with how they put it together.

They basically proposed the same old thing and just said, but do it our way, right? Tomorrow, I'm going to take their 12 and boil it down to two, if that's okay.

Again, a guy sitting in this chair for a long time, fighting with my own demons and helping other people with their demons and figuring out, ultimately, when you wear yourself out, you'll do certain things and you'll get what you want. That's what we'll talk about tomorrow.

And do me a favor, okay? Why don't you just get out there today and live? Do something you like to do. Enjoy it. Maybe take a minute tonight. Think about it.

Whether it's your business or your life, That's how you're going to grow. So kind of get connected and come back tomorrow on the Daily Boost.